Funnels and Tornado Warned Cells in North Texas

Tour Type: Tour 3
Chase Date: 2007 MAY 07
Target Area: Denton to Whiteright, TX
Images: 8

After starting the day off in Weatherford, Oklahoma we chose to target northern Texas from I-35 to highway 75.   The decision was based on area soundings showing high CAPE and plenty of moisture, but our biggest concern with this area was the limited upper-air winds at 500 mb.  That being said for the past two days we’ve been chasing fast moving storms, so we could only hope that there was enough CAPE to get a storm going and with the lower wind speeds aloft any storm that fired would be slow enough to actually chase.

About an hour before sunset we finally got our first storm near Denton, TX which had a rotating wall cloud for a brief period.  We followed this storm to the east to Sherman and then north.   By the time it crossed the Oklahoma and Texas border near the Red River we noted a few power flashes to our northeast (by this time it was dark) and a new cell had formed on its rear flank.  With hopes of being able to get in front of the new cell and actually being able to see some identifiable structure backlit by lightning we turned around and headed for the southern cell – just as we did our original cell became tornado warned by the Norman Forecast Office.

We drove south through Denison and re-targeted the southern cell near the town of Whiteright.  For a brief period we could see a condensation funnel and a lowering to our east.  I tried shooting this with video since we were moving at 50 mph, I had better hopes for video to turn out better than still photography.   We finally drove east of town and setup for some lightning photography opportunities and caught several nice strikes, while enjoying the low rumble of thunder.

SUMMARY:  This was a trying day that required a lot of patience while we worked on our sun tans and just before sunset we got our first storm.  We chased two cells, both tornado warned and saw several interesting nighttime features backlit by lightning.

Storm Chasing Photos

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